Is That Turkey or a Tide Pool?

Immediately after Thanksgiving dinner, almost everyone says that he’s going to eat way less at next year’s holiday meal. I’m no different—in fact, next year I’m eating only microscopic portions. But that’s not because I was too full. It’s because Thanksgiving dinner at microscopic size is way prettier. Last month, Wired magazine had Michael Davidson, a photomicrographer in the Optical Microscopy Division of Florida State University, take extreme zooms of turkey, cranberries, gravy, and more. And, post-Thanksgiving, I’m entranced by the photos.

Davidson’s microphotographs often have an unexpected beauty—his abstract closeups were even used for a line of ties in the 1990s—and his shots of Thanksgiving dinner, the most homespun of meals, are satisfyingly exotic. The bread looks like a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and the potatoes resemble an ice floe that’s breaking up. On the other hand, the explanations won’t make you hungry: “The white bubble might be a fold in the skin,” Davidson says of his turkey photograph. “Or it could be a feather follicle.”